Biological Foundations of Misconduct - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Biological Foundations of Misconduct. Missouri Juvenile Justice Conference October 2012. Special Thanks to: Dr. Barbara Sullivan (Utah Addiction Center) The Dana Foundation. The challenge of working with Adolescents. Parents and professional alike have been puzzled for years………

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The adolescent years, in particular, are a period of heightened vulnerability to reckless behavior that occurs despite the fact that adolescents are more cognitively mature than children………. (Spear 2000).

Viewed in hindsight, many of these adverse outcomes seem to be a result of a poor decision. Although nobody is immune from making bad decisions, adolescents and young adults seem to make a disproportionate share of ultimately fatal or debilitating ones; indeed, bad decisions are the greatest cause of morbidity and mortality in adolescents. (Berns, Moore & Capra, 2009)

The Human Brain Weighing roughly three pounds, the human brain is about the size of a small cauliflower. Although your brain makes up only about 2 percent of your total body weight, it uses some 20 percent of the oxygen your body needs while at rest. The oxygen is used in breaking down glucose to supply the brain with energy.

Although the brain is 80 percent developed at adolescence, research indicates that brain signals essential for motor skills and emotional maturity are the last to extend to the brain’s frontal lobe, which is responsible for many of the skills essential for driving.

Axons ensure smooth communication throughout the brain in two important ways: by conducting electrical impulses and by transporting various molecules and organelles from the cell body to the synapse (Barry et al., 2007).

"White matter is composed of bundles of myelinated axons connecting grey matter areas of the brain, and has been shown to continue to develop throughout adolescence. These systematic changes in white matter organization reflect not only maturation of interconnections but continued maturation of the brain as a whole."

"White matter, and its integrity, are essential to the efficient relay of information within the brain…………

"Indicators of white matter integrity are linked to performance on a range of cognitive tests, including measures of reading, copying complex figures, and speeded coding of information. Abnormalities in white matter health could relate to compromised ability to consider multiple sources of information when making decisions, and to emotional functioning."

Susan F. Tapert, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California

What’s more common is a push for the implementation of stricter graduated licensing laws, which would impose a multi-tiered licensing system to ease teenagers in to the responsibilities of driving without a parent in the car.

Being a responsible adult requires developing self-control over behavior and emotions– must be able to appropriately inhibit behaviors despite STRONG FEELINGS

The ability to integrate these multiple components of behavior, cognition, and affectin the service of long term goals involves neurobehavioral systems that are among the last regions of the brain to fully mature(Dahl, 2004)

Teen decisions are unlikely to emerge from a logical evaluation of the risk/benefits of a situation – rather decisions are the result of a complex set of competing feelings – desire to look cool, fear of being rejected, anxiety about being caught, excitement of risk, etc.

Adolescent brain is a “vulnerable” system that could fail under “hot” high demanding situations – where the circuitry is not sufficiently established to sustain adult level cognitive control of behavior in the face of heightened states of emotion, motivation, distracting stimuli, or competing tasks

(Luna & Sweeny, 2003)

Researchers know that the integrity of the brain\'s white matter is compromised in adult alcoholics, but it is unclear when during the course of drinking white matter abnormalities become apparent. A study of adolescent binge drinkers has found that even relatively infrequent exposure to large doses of alcohol during youth may compromise white matter fiber coherence.

Important to understand that teens often fail to heed common sense or adult warnings because they simply may not be able to understand and/or accept reasons that seem logical and reasonable to adults (difference in evaluating positive & negative consequences {Fromme et al., 1997})

Adolescents may know “right from wrong”, but they may not be able to prioritize when stressed with social/peer pressure

NEVER assume that you and a teen are having the same understanding of a conversation

Prefrontal cortex: brain region particularly concerned with social phenomena (e.g., following norms). Patients with injury to this region often have profound disturbances in their ability to get along with others

Lobotomy: deliberate damaging of the prefrontal cortex; used in the late 1940s early 1950s

Left patients lethargic and emotionally flat, and much easier to manage in mental hospitals, but it also left them disconnected from their social surroundings